I have been using the release candidate of Windows 7 on my main desktop PC and it’s a real improvement over Vista, but unfortunately it’s not enough to warrant a full blown painfully geeky forced party.

Having been back from London for over a week now I thought it best to blog about my time in the capital. For those of you who don’t know I was in London in order to attend Carsonified’s ‘Future Of Web Design’ conference, which I blogged about back in February.

The conference itself provided several highly interesting talks, and although not all of them focused specifically on where the web was heading (the future), the twelve talks overall provided enough engaging content to muse over. One particular talk delivered by accessibility expert Robin Christopherson proved extremely captivating (listen to his talk). During his presentation Robin demonstrated how a visually impaired individual browsed the web. The shear effort it required was truly staggering and really made me think about accessibility issues on the web, along with highlighting the many things wrong with the web today were accessibility is concerned.

Mike Kus from Carsonified supplied the audience with some beautiful slides to gaze over as he presented thoughts on graphic design with the web space, including one tip I that stuck with me: Imagine a web site design as a printed product, ask yourself, would this work in print? Molly Holzschlag, the last talk of the day, gave a great talk about dealing with clients, why open web standards are important and what’s wrong with Internet Explorer. Mark Boulton’s discussion on the importance of typography online was also superb, and got a few laughs due to the appearance of ‘good old’ comic sans.

In addition to the talks on offer, Microsoft were also present at the event showcasing there Surface technology. I had a brief hands-on experience with the Surface table, and it is an impresssive device, although at £8000 I doubt I will be getting one to replace my coffee table any time soon. WooThemes, a premium WordPress theme thing I regularly blog about, were also present at the event, and I even managed to grab a free t-shirt from the WooThemes gang, so thanks once again to Adii and co. All in all the event proved valuable and insightful, although unfortunately my business cards did not turn up in time.

Beyond the food for thought gained it was nice to just escape Lincoln (and University) for a few days and enjoy some time away with my partner Beth, along with meeting some friends while there.